The electrical was up and running and I haven’t mentioned this yet, but I couldn’t bring myself to also demolish the tile floor. When I was finished tearing down the tile walls, I didn’t have it in me to even attempt to jack hammer the tile floor out.

The fact that I was so pooped out from removing the walls wasn’t the *only* reason that I didn’t remove the tile floor. I had an idea!

The flooring where the vanity and closet were wasn’t level with the tile. Before I could do anything, I had to raise that part of the floor to be even with the tile. I knew about self-leveling concrete and decided to give it a try.

You can see the area that I had to fill in. I followed the directions on the back of the bag and used my kool-aid spoon in my drill to mix it up with.

It didn’t take long to dry at all. Once it was dry, I sanded it and had my blank slate for the plan that I had.

Layer #1 of concrete skim. Note: look at all of that tile in the air vent! 😮

Layer #2 of concrete skim. You can see that getting the grout lines to disappear was not as easy as I thought it was going to be…

I didn’t want to try and concrete around the base of the toilet, so I had to lift that off of the toilet hole thing and get under it. I’d never removed a toilet before. I knew it was possible, but I was definitely out of my comfort zone and horribly surprised by a big blob of yellow stuff under there. Nas-tay!

Very patiently, I would apply another layer of concrete skim coat, let it dry, sand it, vacuum, and then apply another layer. It only took about 30-60 minutes for each layer to dry. The sanding made my arms feel like noodles. I got the power sander out after a few rounds of hand sanding, but because the coats were so thin, the power sander made me feel too nervous to keep using it.

You can see the two different concrete colors here. The lighter color is the self-leveling concrete. The darker is the concrete skim coat. At this point the floor was ready for the final step!

I’d thought about stamping the concrete to look like wood planks, but I couldn’t find a stamp. Professionals have amazing stamps, and they cost a few hundred bucks… I had a tiny tool that is used for faux paint treatments that I tried to use in the wet concrete, but it was definitely not the right tool for the job and wasn’t going to do what I wanted it to. You can see in the picture below where I’d tried to use my little tool to do the job.

There are a few things that I’m really good at. I don’t know how or why I’m really great at painting and staining. Somehow, I understand how to mix paints and stains on and use them on surfaces that are out of the ordinary. I’m not always pleased with the outcome, but I imagine any artist isn’t always pleased with their work.

I got started at about 7pm and by 9pm I was done!

I used nearly every kind of paint including: oil, water, chalk, gloss, matte… It was all remnants from prior projects that I’d completed. Once I painted a plank, I would run this tool through the paint to create a wood look.